Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [85]
“Oh no, I think Mother just liked having you around,” Margaret said.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“But I don’t see what you’re saying.”
“They were always asking me to do something,” Elizabeth said. “Step in. Take some action, pour out some feeling. And when I didn’t, they got mad. Then once, one time, I did do something. And what a mess. It was like I’d blundered onto the stage in the middle of a play. What a mess it made!”
“I think you must be talking about Timothy,” Margaret said.
Elizabeth only rolled over and plumped her pillow up.
“But you didn’t do anything,” Margaret said. “Nobody thinks you’re to blame.”
“Talk to your mother about that.”
“Why? Because she never kept in touch? Well, you have to see that—she just doesn’t want to be reminded. If there’s anyone she blames it’s herself.”
“Not that I ever heard,” Elizabeth said.
“She blames herself for telling Timothy that you were taking Matthew home with you.”
“Well, she—what?” Elizabeth sat up. “When did she tell him that?”
“Before he left the house, I guess,” Margaret said. “That morning. She says she should have let you do it, however you were planning to.”
“Before he left with me? Before we went to his place?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
“He knew all along, then,” Elizabeth said. “All the while he was asking to come with me. He planned it that way. He was trying to make me feel bad.”
“Maybe so,” said Margaret. “Anyway, I don’t know how—”
“If I never see another Emerson in all my life,” Elizabeth said, “I’ll die happy.”
Which should have hurt Margaret’s feelings, but it didn’t. She was feeling too sleepy. Sleep took her by surprise, dropping the bottom out of her mind, and suddenly she was blinking and floating, losing track of what they were talking about, spinning off into blurry unrelated thoughts. She was barely conscious of the sound of a match striking. She heard Elizabeth inhaling on a cigarette and crumpling cellophane—wakeful, daytime sounds, but they only made her sink further away. She slept deeply, feeling trustful and protected, as if Elizabeth sitting alert on the floor were a sentry who would keep watch for her through the night.
The wedding was held in a red brick church in the middle of nowhere. Elizabeth directed Margaret there, along glaring highways. She wore her jeans, and her hair was not combed; it blew out like a haystack in the wind. She was going to change at her parents’ house, she said. In the back seat were her suitcase and her sleeping bag. A linen suit hung from a hook by the window. “Oh, you’re not wearing a long dress,” Margaret said. “No,” said Elizabeth. All her answers this morning were brief and vague. Her mind must be on the wedding. She watched the road with narrow gray eyes that looked nearly white in the sunlight. Her face was calm and expressionless, and her hands, curled around her pocketbook, remained perfectly still.
“Here’s where my family lives,” she said finally, and Margaret pulled over to the side of the road. The driveway was choked with cars, each one crinkling the air with heat waves. A woman stood on the cement stoop of the ranch-house, and as soon as the car doors opened she called, “Happy wedding day, honey!” and started down the steps. Margaret hung back, although it was she who carried the white suit. She hated to be the only stranger in someone’s family gathering. “I’ll just go straight to the church,” she told Elizabeth.
“Come in, if you want to.”
“No, I’ll just—”
She pushed the suit on top of Elizabeth’s sleeping bag and turned toward the church, barely taking time to wave at the woman. It must have been Elizabeth’s mother. She was saying, “You haven’t got much time, honey. Oh! Won’t your friend stay? Mrs. Howard’s already at the organ, you can hear her if you’ll listen. Your flowers are in the icebox but don’t you dare get them out till the very last thing, you know how they